Administrative note: The strong undertow of the holiday season is fast sucking me down to the bottom of the sea. I will do my best to answer any pressing questions in the comments this weekend, my good people!

Jeremy and I met our pal for a quick happy hour yesterday evening and there were THREE parties going on at the restaurant. I guess Office Party Season has officially begun. We had one to attend ourselves last night. It’s more of an event though. Ignite Boulder 7 – another sold out crowd at the Boulder Theater! My friends Andrew Hyde, Ef Rodriguez, and heaps of wonderful coordinators, volunteers, sponsors, and speakers pulled off yet another hugely entertaining evening of presentations, music, and prizes. AND they donated all proceeds to The Food Bank of the Rockies. It’s great meeting so many people from my online communities in real life, plus some fresh out of the blue.

ef always warms up the crowd with his sweet voice, guitar, and wit

sold out crowd

fellow citizens play the intermission

What was I saying the other day about my love of summer food in winter? Right… I can’t help it. We had some record low temperatures smacking the Denver-metro area about recently. Last weekend, I was flipping through my copy of Jaden‘s Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. I know, everyone has already seen it. It was part of the schwag bag from the after party at BlogHer Food 09 and I had emailed in for my free copy a few months ago. I waited and waited. I saw tweets and posts from everyone and her sister raving about the book. I waited some more. Then one day, I whine-tweeted online that mine had yet to show up.

Then Jaden, aka Busiest woman on the Planet, said she’d fix everything. And she did.

i love this book almost as much as i love jaden

For as long as I have been aware of food blogs, Steamy Kitchen has always been one of my goto sites for rock-solid Chinese recipes. That and Jaden makes me laugh much like the way my sister made me laugh. But her book is more than just Chinese recipes. It has Thai, Viet, Korean and lots of great Asian fusion dishes like her Korean BBQ burgers.

look at all those goodies

they go *in* the burger

So I’m flipping through the book on a cold and snowy day. Kaweah was curled up next to me on the couch and I saw the burger recipe. I saw it and shouted to Jeremy, “Do you think it’s too cold to grill?” It was 0°F on the deck, but thankfully it wasn’t too windy. Sure, we could grill.

i added yellow pickled radish to the pickle dish

now that’s a brightly colored topper

Everything about the burger recipe appealed to me, although I have to admit that the two biggest draws were Sriracha chili sauce and kimchi. That’s my kind of comfort food. While Jeremy fired up the grill, I made a little Sriracha mayonnaise condiment for the burgers. Jeremy never takes Sriracha straight (white boy), but Sriracha mayonnaise can still deliver the great flavor of chilis without the kick to the gut.

sriracha mayo

grilling the patties

Kaweah could smell the aroma of grilled burgers on the air. She just circled the grill in the snow with her snout raised high, drunk on the odors. They smelled ten times better than a regular burger, that’s for sure. I thought it was just me, since I have grown up loving the combination of green onions, ginger, soy sauce. When Jeremy brought them in off the grill he said, “That smells AMAZING. I can’t wait for lunch!”

The burgers were out-of-this-world-awesome and they were incredibly easy to throw together. The base burger alone is worth trying, but then you can customize it with toppings (I’m all about the toppings). I piled mine with kimchi and Sriracha because that’s True Love right there, folks. That’s probably why I like my burgers to be on the thin side to save space for the toppings. Have some burger with your kimchi?

Make the burgers: Mix the ground beef, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, brown sugar, green onion, sesame seeds, and black pepper together in a bowl. Jaden makes 4 patties out of the batch, but I prefer my burgers thinner, so I made 6 patties. I generally shape them wider than the bun diameter and fairly flat since the burger will shrink in diameter and get taller. Let rest for 15 minutes at room temperature. In the meantime, prepare the quick cucumber carrot pickle. I added the yellow pickled radish (daan moo ji) to mine. They are easy to find in most Asian grocers and some specialty sections in traditional grocery stores. Assemble the condiments and garnishes of your choice for the banchan burger bar. Grill or fry your hamburgers to desired doneness. I grill ours, but Jaden gives some nice instructions on frying them over the stove: Set a large grill pan or frying pan over high heat. When a bead of water sizzles upon contact and evaporates, add the cooking oil. Place the patties on the hot grill or frying pan, not touching each other. Cook the patties 5-7 minutes on each side for mediuam (internal temperature of 150°F/65°C). Serve with burger toppings. Makes 4-6 burgers depending on your preferences.

29 nibbles at “kicking off that holiday season”

Awww hell yeah!! Jaden’s recipe made by Jen ! It can’t get better than this!!
*waving* Hi Jeremy! You look like the rock star out there in the cold, grilling burgers! Gosh you guys eat and grill well, even in the middle of winter. Awesome.

Whoa. Is that big dollop of red on your burger all Sriracha? That’s some serious “Love,” girl. But sub in some Sriracha mayo and that would be my perfect burger. Beautiful photos, too. I’m so jealous of the light quality in your pictures. Are you lucky enough to get that from windows, or do you enhance with artificial light?

One more thing: It’s never too cold to grill hamburgers. If you’ve ever eaten a hot, juicy burger after a morning of skiing in deep snow, you know exactly why this is true. :)

Delicious. You know I trust you, even though I dont know you. I bought The Border Cookbook after you had talked about it on your blog. I absolutely love it. Now, if you say Jadens book is all that, I may have to buy it. Arent you glad you got that book to Jenyu! ;)

Wow, that sounds amazing. I’m a lot newer to that combination of flavors than you, but I know I love it. I think I’ll be (finally!) buying my first grill in a month or so, and since it’s warm nearly the whole year where I’m moving, I should be making these fairly soon!

I love thin burgers for the same reason! The awesome toppings.
I’m guilty of spending way more time on prepping my toppings than the burger itself. But they add so many different flavors to the burger.

Wow! This is great to serve at a small gathering which I will call Make Your Own Burgers! I had just bought a bottle of Sriracha chili sauce when I saw in at a supermarket in Bangkok, Thailand! This will be a great recipe to break it out!

I’ve been telling myself that I need another cookbook like I need a hole in my head, but you may have just sold Jaden’s to me. My picky kids love Chinese, Vietnamese & Thai food…go figure. Should be a good investment. Totally unrelated…does Kaweah think it’s the coolest thing when you move a piece of furniture to a new spot, so you can bring in something, like a Christmas tree? I’ve got cats running around like maniacs, jumping on & off a chair they usually ignore. Nutso creatures.

I am raving to friends about some shredded duck tacos with kimchi and lime that I had at the Red Fez here in Providence a couple of months ago… yum. Hope you’ll make it to New England one of these days.

I’ve been checking out Steamy Kitchen for a while now and have seen many recipes from her cookbook on other blogs (PW, White on Rice amongst others), but this was the one that made me order the book. It is in transit right now!

WoRC – oh, we’re just trying to be like you guys grilling year round, except we don’t have that perfect bbq weather ;)

Fiona – the book is terrific. I hope you like it!

Dawn – no, that’s ketchup :) but I do have Sriracha on my burger for sure. When I shoot it’s either with natural light if daytime, or artificial lights if nighttime.

Lori – oooooh, the Border Cookbook is such a great book, isn’t it?

Kelly – how cool :) This is a super easy intro to Asian, definitely give it a try (total winner).

Kristin – ah well, that would imply some sort of intelligence on the part of the dog which… there isn’t. When we move furniture around she watches until the furniture stops moving so she can hop up on the couch again to sleep :)

Tried this recipe and it was AWESOME! Thank you, Jen. Recipe is delicious. The only recommendation for the vegie salad topping is that for future, I would only use the solid parts of the cucumber, not the seedy part. it gets too watery. I used the English cucumbers and i would probably use wax cucumbers or Korean pickling kind. This is now my favorite burger! Thanks so you!!

Keep adding more of your delicious recipes and beautiful pictures of the food. They inspire me!